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Wednesday 13th February 2013: The newest press release and call for experiences
Bricks in the making
Restauro, the trade fair for the Art of Restoration and Conservation of our Cultural and Environmental Heritage, is the first and most important Italian event dedicated to the art of restoration and the conservation of Italian artistic heritage taking place in Ferrara (Italy). About 30.000 visitors attend the exhibition every year during the 4 days; the event is supported by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Activities and Heritage. Visitors are Architects, engineers, students and professionals who work within the Heritage domain. This year the event is expected to gain a special attention, because of the Earthquake that hit Emilia Romagna in May 2012 that damaged and destroyed most of the local heritage.
The LEGO connection
The faculty of Architecture at University of Ferrara is a historical partner of Restauro, providing contents and showing the most advanced techniques in buildings’ restoration. This year the Faculty has accepted an educational challenge aiming at improving and encouraging students’ reflection on Heritage, also in consideration of the recent events which enormously affected the area. To achieve such a goal, and to experiment a new educational approach to help students to build their class project teams, we adopted an LSP-based approach. We run 3 workshops involving around 35 students divided in 3 groups, whose task was to reflect on the course key concepts, Architecture and Heritage, and to build a shared model of the latter. The outcome was exciting and students reflections have brought on the table a number of valuable and original concepts that they have developed further as a group, taking it from the negotiated meanings and the LEGO model they all built together. After such a positive experience, the Department of Ferrara decided to organise an event that could combine the power of LEGO and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY in a 4 days’ event with the goal to bring new ideas about Heritage in a place, and in a moment, where new inputs are needed the most.
The space and the initiatives: B4B
This year, the University of Ferrara, department of Architecture, is planning a set of initiatives that combine 4 key themes: LEGO Architecture, LEGO SERIOUS PLAY, Heritage and Inclusion. The event is called B4B, playing with the world ‘before’ and the meaning of B4 which stays for ‘Bricks for…’. We identified several spaces and topics to develop, including:
B4BRIC / B4BIG > in the first case we refer to BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and the latter is a play with words meaning Brazil, India and Georgia, since the University of Ferrara is preparing an exhibition dedicated to famous 20th century architects who worked in Brazil, India and Georgia, thanks to its international network of relationships.
B4Box > it’s the exhibition stand, which will cover 200 m2. The space is built with panels that allow retro-projections to show videos and images related to Heritage, and it includes a Box built with elements that recall the LEGO bricks, where many events will take place.
B4Bridge > Bridges are those we construct between cultures and skills. We will involve students from different cultural and educational background [students in management, design and architecture] in a LEGO SERIOUS PLAY workshop, we’ll built those bridges to better understand what is Heritage and how different needs and visions can be merged into a new approach to Heritage. Another workshop is ‘under construction’ and might involve either Local stakeholders, who are facing Heritage management from many points of view, or the members of the jury of CHIDeC, a new contest about Heritage and inclusivity that will be launched during the exhibition. The workshops will be open and visitors to the exhibition will be allowed to follow the work in progress, so that they can feel and see LEGO SERIOUS PLAY at work.
B4Briefing > this is a free space available for short talks, presentations, discussions….
B4Books > a space for books’ presentations.
B4Brands > a space for organisations and companies to present their products and projects.
B4Brain > this title embraces a number of initiatives to launch CHIDeC (Cultural Heritage Inclusive Design Contest), an international contest calling for projects that significantly improve cultural Heritage accessibility and inclusivity [both physical and content accessibility].
LEGO Architecture > University of Ferrara will curate an exhibition called XXHeritage dedicated to 20th century’s buildings’ renovation. This exhibition also present LEGO Architecture models, in partnership with LEGO Italia Spa.
LEGO Interviews > A number of interviews based on the LegoViews technique (www.legoviews.com) will involve several leading experts in the field of Heritage, including Arch. Carla Di Francesco (Emilia Romagna Heritage Regional Director) and Prof. François Burkhard, an internationally known critique and historian. The Lego interviews will be performed both during the event and few of them will be done in the weeks before, so that clips will be used as promotional video to be published online.
“LEGO & ARCHITECTURE: the serious game of understanding ‘time/space’
To better combine and underline how the key themes (LEGO / LEGO SERIOUS PLAY /LEGO Architecture / Heritage / Inclusion) can work together, we are organising a final conference to be held in Ferrara during Restauro on Saturday 23rd March. We already invited the relevant keynote speakers and outlined a draft agenda, still open, subject to changes and adjustments. The following experts have been confirmed:
- Robert Rasmussen, Rasmussen Consulting (Denmark),
- Lucio Margulis. Juego SerioTM (Argentina), [Confirmed Skype speech]
- Patrizia Bertini, ESC Rennes School of Business (France),
- Giuseppe Mincolelli, Università di Ferrara, CHIDEC (Italy),
- Elena Marchiori, Università della Svizzera Italiana, User Requirements with LEGO (Switzerland)
The conference will be both in Italian and English [with translations for those who require it] and it will be filmed and edited – with English/Italian subtitles: the final video would represent the proceeding of the event to be published and made available online. All the events organised at Restauro 2013 will be reported and described in a special issue of Paesaggio Urbano/Urban Design, an architecture bimonthly magazine available in Italian and English.
The participation to all these initiatives is free.
If You have relevant case history, projects, experiences that combines LEGO, LSP and Heritage and you would like to present it during the event, feel free to get in touch!
Ferrara: Ferrara is a city in Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy. It is situated 50 km north-northeast of Bologna (20 minutes by train) and 90 Km south east of Firenze (1 hour by train). The town has broad streets and numerous palaces dating from the 14th century and 15th century, when it hosted the court of the House of Este. For its beauty and cultural importance it has been qualified by UNESCO as World Heritage Site.
For more information on the venue, see Ferrara Tourist Office.
LegoViews 
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